Best of Bainbridge (Bainbridge Island Review): How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Best of Bainbridge and who runs it?

Best of Bainbridge is the readers' choice program of the Bainbridge Island Review, a Washington newspaper serving Bainbridge Island in Kitsap County. Readers nominate local favorites and then vote for them, and the paper announces the outcomes afterward. The 2024 results notice described the nominations as an unscientific, fun way to highlight distinctive local choices, which remains the clearest statement the organizer has put its name to about what the ballot is for.

Supporters reach the ballot through the newspaper's own space on Second Street, a contest platform many publishers use, at bainbridgeislandreview.secondstreetapp.com. The promotion is registered there as a Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot, which is why each cycle carries a nomination stretch before voting opens. Between cycles the paper publishes at bainbridgereview.com, where its Best of Bainbridge announcements appear. The program sits in the best-of vertical beside larger Washington readers' choice contests, but its scope is a single island community rather than a county or a region.

When has Best of Bainbridge run, and when does voting happen?

The program is annual. A Bainbridge Island Review article announcing the 2024 results fixes the earliest documented cycle at 2024, and a dedicated 2025 ballot followed. That 2025 ballot ran from May 19 through July 14, 2025, and carried its own address on the same host at /Best-of-Bainbridge-2025, so separately dated editions sit side by side on the newspaper's Second Street account. The most recent listing shows voting from June 15 through July 27, 2026, and it has since closed.

Nominations and voting sit inside the same calendar stretch rather than running as separate seasons. When the 2026 cycle launched, the paper stated that nominations were live June 15 through June 28, with voting continuing into late July, so the whole nomination and voting activity falls inside a single contiguous window ending in late July.

Voter eligibility terms and the complete category slate go unprinted beside the listing itself; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How does a supporter cast votes in Best of Bainbridge?

The rhythm comes straight from the newspaper's own line: a vote once per day in each category. In practice a supporter opens the ballot, picks a category, selects a nominee and submits, and the form accepts fresh support in that category again the following day. A single visit can carry support for many different island nominees, one pick per category, and when the calendar turns over every category welcomes that same supporter back.

What the form asks of you

The ballot presents itself as an ordinary web form on the Bainbridge Island Review's Second Street pages. The listing describes no account requirement and attaches no fee to voting, so the practical work is choosing categories and remembering to come back.

Why the daily reset matters

Because support refreshes each day, steady revisits through the window beat a solitary submission made in early June and forgotten afterward. A nominee backed by a handful of daily regulars accumulates far more across the weeks the ballot stays open than a burst of same-day attention delivers.

How does this ballot compare with other Washington readers' choice contests?

Washington runs several best-of programs of this family, and the neighbours gathered around this one are numerous: Best of 425 for Bellevue and the Eastside, Cascade's Best, the Columbian's Best of Clark County, the Everett Herald's Best of Snohomish County, KING5's Best of Western Washington and the Seattle Medium's Northwest-wide readers' choice contest. All lean on open public tallies, yet each is bounded by its publisher's footprint.

Best of Bainbridge is the small-scale member of that set. Its electorate is an island community reading a local newspaper, not a county or a broadcast region, which changes how a campaign spreads: word travels through a compact downtown, school networks and neighborhood social groups rather than across a metro. Kitsap County holds the community, and the Review is the masthead its residents already read, so the ballot doubles as a local loyalty exercise.

The Bainbridge Island Review also keeps other promotions on the same Second Street host, notably quarterly sweepstakes with $5,000 drawings and a $15,000 year-end edition. Those are separate from the ballot and do not affect its tally.

How can a Bainbridge business strengthen its support?

The mechanics of this ballot point to a particular kind of effort. Because the Bainbridge Island Review lets supporters vote once per day in each category, the useful motion is a reminder loop, not a single push: ask customers to revisit the ballot each morning through the window, and to spread their daily votes across every category where the business appears.

The nomination stretch in mid-June is where a campaign starts, since a business must be on the slate before anyone can vote for it. Watching the paper's announcements as the cycle opens matters more here than on countywide ballots, where slates are broader and attention is diluted.

Beyond that, the newspaper's printed material covers frequency and little else, so treat its own announcements as the governing text. General tactics for rallying supporters, from email lists to counter signage, are gathered in this guide to getting more votes online.